At times in Christian thought, the priorities of pure doctrine and passionate mission have been perceived as opposites on a spectrum where emphasis on one results in neglect of the other, but without one, the other is deficient and doomed to crumble. Mission without doctrine is like a body without a skeleton, but apart from mission, doctrine is like dry bones in a museum. A Lutheran Reformission maintains a dual emphasis, resulting in doctrinal missions as well as missional doctrine.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Q:What is the main thing in
Christianity—the central idea or goal around which everything else
revolves?What is the place of things
like a changed attitude or moral improvement in Christianity?

If a Sunday School teacher were to
ask her students to answer this question with a single word, they would most
likely give the answer that Sunday School students always give when they don’t
know the answer:“Jesus.”On this occasion, that answer would be
correct.Now, since every teaching of
Christianity either comes from Jesus or points to Jesus, it will be necessary
to answer an additional question:“What
did Jesus come to accomplish?”

The purpose for which Jesus came was
to forgive sins, resulting in eternal life for all who would trust in Him.He accomplished this by living perfectly and
dying innocently as our substitute, therefore fulfilling the law of God and
suffering the punishment of God in our place.The consequence of this is that all who rely on Him and His life and
death in their place are credited by God with a perfect life and as having the
punishment for their sins already served, with the result that at death their
souls rest with Christ at death and then they will live forever after the
Resurrection on the Last Day.

Because this is thoroughly a gift
from God to the Christian, we call this God’s grace, and this grace is
distributed to humans through Churches where the message of Jesus is taught and
proclaimed from the Bible, and Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are administered
as means through which this grace, won by Jesus, is delivered to individual
Christians.

Everything else which follows in
Christianity is built upon the foundation of those two truths.Unless God forgives sins, none of the other
blessings found in Christianity are relevant, because if one remains a sinner
in God’s eyes (and even one imperfection renders that judgment) everything
else, whether good deeds done by the individual or positive attitudes
experienced by the individual, are immaterial.

The place of our moral improvement or
positive attitude in Christianity is as a result of having sins forgiven.God’s forgiving is not merely a step on the
way to a greater goal of moral improvement, but instead, moral improvement is an
inevitable consequence of one’s sins being forgiven by God.God does desire us to live morally and be
empowered to deal in a healthy way with the challenges of life, but it is not
the central thing in Christianity.

Regrettably, dislocating moral
improvement in the life of the church occurs all too frequently—either by
improperly elevating it to the goal and central aspect of Christianity, or by
disregarding it entirely as unimportant, and it is precisely this dislocation
that is at the root of many of the disagreements among Christians about moral
issues today.

One camp desires to approve and
encourage any act that individuals feel in their hearts is moral, even when
there are clear Scriptural prohibitions to the contrary; while another
adamantly defends The Bible’s moral commands, but in doing so, at least gives
the appearance, if not outright stating, that certain sins are worse than
others—a clearly un-Scriptural position.Both of these equal-but-opposite errors occur because moral improvement
has been dislocated in the life and teaching of a Church or its members.

When Christian morality is held up as
a good and important thing; but the grace and forgiveness of God through Christ
alone, and the delivery of it to the gathered saints, are retained as the most
important goal and central activity of the Church, steady balance is retained
and the truth shines forth.Whenever
these priorities become dislocated, the foundation becomes unstable and the
truth is obscured.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Q:When visiting a church on
Sunday, I observed that the congregation began the service with a Confession of
Sins, and at the end of that Confession, the pastor said to the congregation,
“I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit.”Can the pastor forgive
sins or only God?Does the pastor also
have the power to refuse to forgive sins?

The Confession described here is the
opening element of services in many liturgical churches.It functions in much the same way that
private confessions do, but in this case, confession is done generally, as a
group, with specific individual sins recounted only silently rather than named
individually to the priest or pastor.

Much like private confession, the
pastor’s declaration of forgiveness is, in Martin Luther’s words, “just as
valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord had dealt with us
Himself.”Even though this may be an
uncomfortable thought for many individualistic do-it-yourself Americans, and
even though all who trust Jesus have their sins forgiven, the idea that God
desires to deliver forgiveness in specific ways, which involve pastors, also is
Biblical.

In Matthew 16, we see Jesus promise
this authority to Peter, saying, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of
heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever
you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”In this case, Jesus promises that this authority will be given in the
future, and makes the promise to Peter individually.However, when Jesus fulfills this promise, as
recorded in John 20, saying, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending
you… Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they
are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld,” He
grants this authority not only to Peter, but to all of His disciples, and by
extension to the pastors who would follow them in coming generations.

This is not to say, however, that pastors
may grant or withhold forgiveness according to their own whim or based on their
own standards.Instead, they are called
to grant and to withhold forgiveness solely as a reflection of what God has
already determined by God in heaven, which the Greek words John writes in these
verses make clear.In private
confession, this means that pastors forgive those who acknowledge and repent of
their sins, but withhold from those who refuse to acknowledge their sins or
repent of them.Since pastors are not
capable of judging anyone’s heart, they must base their actions on what is
declared or confessed by the person seeking forgiveness.Likewise in public confession, the absolution
is given under the assumption that those confessing are confessing sincerely.

Additionally, pastors do not forgive
sins as independent agents, nor do they have the power within themselves to
forgive or withhold sins.Instead, they
have been called to a particular office to act on behalf of Jesus and His
Church, and their authority to forgive sins is exercised in the congregation
“in the stead and by the command” of Jesus, as is stated in the absolution
itself.Another way to say it is that
when the pastor is forgiving sins, Jesus is forgiving sins; or that Jesus
forgives sins through the pastor.

So, it would not be possible for a
pastor to improperly keep God’s forgiveness from getting to a person or to
effectually grant forgiveness when the person was unrepentant.If it would happen that a pastor were to attempt
to act in violation of Jesus command or apart from the proper authority to do
so, the warnings and promises of Scripture would still prevail respectively for
the benefit of the repentant and the condemnation of the unrepentant, in spite
of a mistaken or improper act of the pastor.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Q:Can Satan use electronic
devices, such as computers or televisions to tempt humans?Would a demon come to someone through one of
these devices?What you would recommend
to someone who thinks this is happening?Could this really be the case, or might they be hallucinating?

The topic of demonic activity is one that we in the United
States often disregard, but there are real beings—both good and evil—in
spiritual realms. Scripture is quite
clear that the demonic world is real and that it is not something to take
lightly. In fact, the Bible even attributes such things as false religions (1
Corinthians 10) and false doctrine (1 Timothy 4) as actually being the work of
demons, done for the purpose of misleading people in regard to spiritual
things.

The most important thing to remember when speaking of demons is what their
purpose is--to lead people away from trusting in Jesus. Sometimes they do this
deliberately and obviously, such as by tempting a person to curse God or commit
sin. On other occasions, they might work more deceptively in quite the opposite
manner--by leading a person to be moral or religious, but to rely on their
morality or religiosity instead of the sacrifice of Jesus to receive God's
blessing.

Additionally, we often mischaracterize how a demon might
appear.Because demons intend to deceive
their victims, not merely scare them, and because they desire to do spiritual,
not physical harm, it is highly unlikely that one will ever encounter an oozing,
screeching, visible being such as those portrayed in many supernatural dramas
on television.Instead, one may only
observe the temptation or false idea itself without detecting the demon which
inspired it.In any case, it may at
times be very clear that spiritual forces of evil are at work, while at others,
they may be quite invisible, subtle, and deceptive.

Regarding the specific case of digital communication being the medium for
demonic activity, I would not rule it out, but I imagine the mechanism is
slightly different than many would imagine. So, for example, it seems unlikely that a
demon would possess a digital device or communicate directly with a person
through it. However, it is highly likely that a demon would tempt a person to
misuse a digital device in a way that would lead people away from Jesus.

An excellent example of this would be internet pornography or similarly
inappropriate digital conversations. These would be perfect illustrations of
the sort of thing a demonic force would love to have a person become entrenched
in, and I have heard anecdotal evidence that many (men especially) have
experienced demonic encounters that are directly or indirectly connected to
habitual inappropriate uses of the internet. Obviously, this is just one of
many ways in which they might tempt a person to sin by misusing technology, and
the particular temptation might vary from person to person, manifesting in
things such as habitual electronic gambling or neglect of one’s duties as a
parent or employee in favor of wasteful internet use.

To summarize, it is entirely possible that a demon would use the TV, internet,
or other forms of technology as a means to lead a person into something that
will serve as an obstacle between them and Jesus. The best way to discern what
one is experiencing in a particular circumstance would be to find a competent,
Biblical, and trustworthy pastor in order to describe the problem in detail and
seek his guidance.Because situations
like this are so individual that no generic response will be able to do justice
to the situation, personally involved pastoral care is the best resource.

Lutheranism is more than a cultural identity or a denominational label. In fact, this cultural and institutional baggage may be the primary obstacle in Lutheranism’s path.

To be a Lutheran is not dependent on a code of behavior or a set of common customs. Instead, to be a Lutheran is to receive Jesus in His Word, Body, and Blood for the forgiveness of sins in the Divine Service; and to be bearers of this pure Truth to a broken world corrupted with sin, death, and every lie of the devil and man’s own sinful heart.

While the false and misleading ideas of human religious invention are appealing to sin-blinded minds, they fail when exposed to the realities of life. It is tragic when souls are led to confusion and despair because of the false religious ideas with which they are surrounded. The Biblical doctrine taught by the Apostles and restored at the Reformation holds answers which are relevant regardless of time or place and offers assurance of forgiven sins and eternal life who all who believe its message.

I am a husband, a father, the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Burt, IA, and track chaplain at Algona Raceway.